Reading about Nassim Taleb's Black Swan theory - that we are disposed to think that events are predictable and that we reinforce this with hindsight.

Wikipedia cites an example Taleb uses to explain his theory is the events of 11 September 2001. Namely that

"the attack on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon using commercial airliners was virtually unthinkable at the time. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it has come to be seen as a predictable incident in the context of the changes in terrorist tactics."

I beg to differ. If security analysts had thought in terms of 'what powerful destructive force could a terrorist get his or her hands on?' then an airliner would have been on the list.

About Me

It will be a Tuesday, around 11am. He (or 'she') will get up from his desk and walk out because he isn't going to do this any more. He will walk out onto the street. He will be struck by how strongly he feels that he is going to do this.

He is going to stop the merry-go-round of the office and this way of doing things. He sees the whole structure and he isn't going to be part of it. There has to be a better way.

He feels slightly dazed, but his heart pounds when he reaches the street and finds that many, many people are there, standing like he is standing, drinking it in.

Favourite Quote

My favourite quote is a long one - so if you are looking for something short and catchy, you might want to skip this.

The quote is from Isaiah Berlin's 1957 Herbert Samuel lecture on Chaim Weizman, in which Berlin said:

“Weizman had all his life believed that when great public issues are joined one must above all take sides; whatever one did, one must not remain neutral or uncommitted, one must always - as an absolute duty - identify oneself with some living force in the world, and take part in the world’s affairs with all the risk of blame and misrepresentation and misunderstanding of one’s motives and character which this almost invariably entails.

Consequently .. he (Weizman) called for no compromise, and denounced those who did. He regarded with contempt the withdrawal from life on the part of those to whom their personal integrity, or peace of mind, or purity of ideal, mattered more than the work upon which they are engaged and to which they were engaged and to which they were committed, the artistic, or scientific, or social, or political, or purely personal enterprises in which all men are willy-nilly involved.

He did not condone the abandonment of ultimate principles before the claims of expediency or of anything else; but political monasticism - a search for some private cave of Adullam to avoid being disappointed or tarnished, the taking up of consciously utopian or politically impossible positions, in order to remain true to some inner voice, or some unbreakable principle too pure for the wicked public world - that seemed to him a mixture of weakness and self-conceit, foolish and despicable.”